How-to: Master the Next Action

Hello Predictable Revenue community,

Remember last week’s post about Nurturing? Well, today I'm going expand on those ideas and add an additional layer, Next Actions. There is some overlap between the two because I wanted to layout a coherent standalone post, so apologies if some of this feels like review. In fairness, that’s probably not a bad thing.

After working with thousands of B2B sales teams, I've found that the most successful salespeople don't obsess over fancy tools or complicated methodologies - they're maniacally focused on two simple questions:

1. What needs to happen next to move this deal forward?

2. When exactly am I going to do it?

That's it. And today, I'm going to show you exactly how to implement this approach in your sales process.

Why Most Sales Processes Fail

Most sales processes fail because they don't have shared definitions that are used the exact same way by everyone. There are a few reasons for this:

1. The definitions were never properly shared or trained

2. The definitions weren't clear in the first place

3. There was nobody acting as a check to ensure people were using them correctly

If you're a programmer, this is like writing code without unit tests. The system looks like it's working until someone uses it differently than you intended, and then everything breaks.

This is why you see sales teams with stages like "Proposal" that contain opportunities ranging from "sent proposal yesterday" to "sent proposal six months ago and haven't heard back." Without clear, objective definitions and consistent enforcement, the deals in your pipeline are meaningless. 

How to Implement the Next Action Approach

Before diving into the steps, let me introduce you to a powerful concept from David Allen's Getting Things Done called "Mind Like Water." It refers to a mental state where "your head is clear, able to create and respond freely, unencumbered with distractions and split focus."

Here's what happens to most salespeople: they look at their pipeline with 30, 50, or 100+ opportunities, and their brain tries to load the context for EVERY single deal to figure out what needs attention. This consumes enormous mental RAM and leads to decision paralysis. You know that feeling when you stare at your pipeline for 20 minutes and still don't know where to start? That's mental RAM overload.

The Next Action approach solves this problem by creating a system your brain trusts, allowing your subconscious to forget about all your deals until the exact moment you need to work on them. It's like having an external hard drive for your sales process, freeing up your mental CPU for what matters: having great conversations with prospects.

Here's how to implement this in your sales process:

Step 1: Get Clear on Definitions

The first step is getting crystal clear on definitions. What exactly does each stage in your pipeline mean? At what precise moment does a deal move from one stage to the next?

Great sales organizations create customer verifiable outcomes for each stage - specific actions the customer has taken (not things you believe or feel) that signal the deal is genuinely at that stage.

For example:

• Qualified: Prospect has attended a first call

• Discovery: Relevant stakeholders have attended next call

• Solution Review: Client has confirmed "do nothing is off the table"

• Verbal/Contracting: Received verbal commitment and paperwork is in process

• Closed Won: Payment received or official purchase order

These aren't subjective assessments - they're concrete actions the customer has taken that everyone on your team can recognize and agree on.

Step 2: Implement Next Actions

For every opportunity in your pipeline, create a field for each of the following:

1. Next Action - A specific, verb-led task that YOU control

• Not vague ("Follow up")

• Starts with an action verb ("Send ROI calculation")

• Clear and specific ("Book technical review call with Jane and Mark")

• Ideally this is something like “Follow up call booked 4/24 to discuss proposal”

2. Next Action Date - The EXACT day you will complete the next action

• Set for the actual day you'll do it

• Review daily to ensure nothing falls through the cracks

This approach works whether you're using that free spreadsheet CRM I shared last year (still available here) or any CRM. 

Step 3: Implement Your Daily Routine

Here's the daily routine that will transform your sales results:

1. Start each day by reviewing your pipeline sorted by next action date

2. Focus on completing all actions scheduled for today

3. After each customer interaction, immediately set the new next action and date

4. Update deal stages based on customer verifiable outcomes, not gut feeling

This simple routine ensures nothing falls through the cracks and keeps your deals moving forward.

Delete Closed-Lost

You know what I did that instantly improved my pipeline visibility? I deleted "Closed Lost" as a status in my CRM.

Yeah, you read that right. I replaced it with two much more useful statuses:

1. Closed-Lost Nurture: For qualified prospects who said "not now" rather than "no"

2. Closed-Lost FOAD: Which stands for... well, let's just say "leave me alone and perish" (use your imagination)

Now, I’ve set the bar pretty high for whether or not I’m going to reach out to someone again. That means, unless they give me strict instructions, I’m going to follow up with them again at some point. This small change completely transformed how I manage deals. When I looked at my pipeline afterward, it was like Marie Kondo had visited - everything suddenly sparked joy instead of anxiety.

The problem with most pipelines is they mix active opportunities, nurture prospects, and dead leads into a single view, creating mental overload. Looking at my pipeline before this change was like trying to drink from a firehose. Afterward, it was like having a clean, organized desk where I could actually find things.

Most sales reps discard, ignore, or simply forget about prospects that fall out of their pipeline because they're hard to track. But that pot of gold sitting in your nurture list might be your most profitable source of future revenue.

When we zoom waaaay out, you can see that sales requires managing four distinct funnels:

1. Meet Funnel (Prospecting)

• How you identify and connect with new potential customers

• Sources: conferences, outbound calling, LinkedIn, advertising, etc.

• Focus: Getting first meetings with qualified prospects

2. Disco Funnel (Active Closing)

• Your current active opportunities working through the sales stages

• These are deals with potential to close in the current period

• Focus: Moving opportunities efficiently through the stages

3. Manage Funnel (Current Clients)

• Managing relationships with existing customers

• Ensuring satisfaction, preventing churn, finding expansion opportunities

• Focus: Maintaining strong relationships for renewals and referrals

4. Nurture Funnel (Closed-Lost-Nurture)

• Past prospects who were qualified but not ready to buy

• The gold mine most sales teams completely ignore

• Focus: High-context follow-ups based on their specific situation

For even more precision, I sometimes further split the Nurture status into:

• Closed-Lost Nurture AE: High-context follow-ups the AE should handle personally ("We're raising a round in Q3, check back then")

• Closed-Lost Nurture SDR: Prospects an SDR can follow up with (good fit but timing was off)

This creates a literal pot of gold for your SDRs to work - qualified prospects who already know who you are but you don’t have time to follow up with. 

Splitting these funnels offers clear benefits:

• Fewer opps per pipeline: You can more easily see where each account stands

• More relevant stages: You'll define pipeline stages that actually match the steps needed to move an opportunity forward

• Clearer sales cycle data: When you remove nurtures from your active pipeline, you'll start to see your true sales velocity

Mastering High-Context Follow-ups

When following up with nurture prospects, the approach matters:

BAD: "Just checking in to see if now is a better time to talk."

GOOD: "Last time we spoke, you mentioned waiting until you completed your initial website redesign before considering PR services. How's that redesign progressing?"

The reason salespeople stop sending follow-ups is because they're either hard to manage (process) or they simply aren't effective. We've already tackled the process aspect through next actions, but now it's time to enhance their effectiveness.

The solution lies in context - remembering and referencing specific details about your prospect's situation. This makes it easy for them to reconnect and pick up exactly where you left off. During a recent client call, I shared a simple yet powerful example that transformed their perspective on follow-ups:

Last year, I met a prospect who mentioned they were raising a funding round and intended to use some of that capital to build a sales development team. Instead of a generic "thanks" and a vague reminder to follow up later, I asked targeted questions: How's the raise progressing? Who are you planning to bring in? When do you expect it to close?

After noting their anticipated timeline, I added an extra month (fundraising usually takes longer than planned) and scheduled a specific next action: "Check Crunchbase to confirm they've closed their round."

When I saw their Series A had closed, I reached out directly to ask if building their sales development team had become a priority now that the funding was secured.

Note: the actual story and follow-up was much more detailed than what’s up here. The actual context would have made it easy to identify the company and I didn’t want to share those details. 

This wasn't a typical follow-up - it showed genuine interest and thoughtful attention to their context. High-context follow-ups like this regularly achieve response rates 3-4 times higher than generic "just checking in" messages.

Putting It All Together

See why I told you not to buy a CRM? I wasn't saying organization doesn't matter - I was saying your time is better spent on a simple system you'll actually use than on a complex one you won't.

The Next Action approach works with any tool - from spreadsheets to Salesforce - because it focuses on what matters: consistently taking the right actions to move deals forward.

Try implementing this approach for just one week:

1. Define clear customer verifiable outcomes for each stage

2. Add Next Action and Next Action Date fields to every opportunity

3. Split your pipeline into the four funnels

4. Start each day by working through your next actions due today

5. Set new next actions immediately after each interaction

I guarantee you'll see more movement in your pipeline than you have in months.

Collin

PS - If you want the full sales guide that covers all these concepts in more detail, just hit reply with "GUIDE" and I'll send it your way.

PPS - I recorded last week’s newsletter as a youtube video, check out the link here (it’ll be up later today if it’s not there when you click).